Blog Posts

Marco de Vivo built a MIDI adapter for the Neo Ventilator.  He says the Neo Ventilator is a great leslie simulator, but it lacks MIDI, so he built his own MIDI adapter for it.

The UPS powered adapter includes a stereo output jack for Neo Ventilator connection and foot pedals to control slow/fast velocity and stop rotor.

This video shows the Ventilator and the adapter in action.

 

 

 

 

Cine-Lights made a beautiful fire lamp using WS2812 LEDs.

The lamp has over 20 different animations including a static night lamp, particle torch, fire effect, and a lava lamp.  Links to the code can be found here, on the YouTube page.  The code is an edited version of a torch lamp by Jason Coon of Evil Genius Labs.

 

Forum user sevEnil2 (Severin N), together with his brother, built an LED table with bubble wall.  Not only does this table feature LEDs wtih and infinity mirror, it also has aquarium tanks on all 4 sides.  The use of the CD drive to house the controls is one of the many cool features of this project.

The pair undertook the project to learn about micro controller programming, woodworking, and custom tank making.  They found a lot of help with their projects from on-line communities.  You can follow the discussions about the development on this forum thread and this one  well.  There is also this Google + conversation to check out.

 

Elmue made his own RFID door lock with battery back up.  He was inspired after reading some articles about home burglars.

After searching for an electronic door lock, and not being satisfied by what he found, Elmue decided to build his own.  The design features a powerful battery back up, an easy to use interface, the ability to store up to 64 users, and it mounts inside the door so it’s not visible from outside or exposed to the elements.

There is an excellent, detailed write up on the project that include a schematic, parts list, and code.

 

 

 

 

Floris van Manen helped create DONKER LICHT, a beautiful LED art installation at the Meerrijk in Eindhoven.

 

There are 60 RGB led armatures with 16bit resolution per color controlled over DMX using a Teensy.  The lamps change color individually continuously, day and night.

Michele Perla put together a DIY USB MIDI Controller.  The MPC (Music Production Controller).

This video shows the controller in action at the Rome MakerFaire.

Mick needed a simple and effective instrument to create drum beats without having to manually write them note by note.  He wanted something more than most of the DIY MIDI controllers out there that use simple on/off buttons.  The answer was to build his own using force sensitive resistors (FSRs).

 

The controller has 16 buttons using FSRs arranged in a 4×4 matrix.  The FSRs can sense the amount of pressure applied to a button and use that information for things such as a velocity of a note, control change value, etc.

There is a pretty good write up on his HackADay.IO project page that includes schematics of the project.

Dave built a home heating monitor to collect data on the duty cycle of all the heating zones in his house in hopes better understanding the activity  off all the zones in order to reduce oil usage and save a few bucks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The first version of the project didn’t pan out so well.  The controller used didn’t work out so well.  In version 2 of the project Dave used Teensys to take data measurements and send the data another controller.

Dave found that storing the data on a webserver is easier than storing it in an embedded device, and displaying the data in HTML on a web page is more flexible that doing it in a Windows app.

 

 

Timothy Meyer helped his daughter improve her TARDIS pinewood derby car by adding light and sound to it.

Timothy used an orphaned micro speaker, a jiggle-switch motion sensor, and a blue LED to make the improvements.  The motion sensor allows for the TARDIS landing sound to be made when the car is touched.

The source code for the project can be found on the Nova Labs project page.

 

 

 

 

Doug Hoyte has made his own devise to assist with morse code transmission.

This is the keyer pared with a straight key

A dual-paddle (iambic) key is the preferred key for the project.

The guts of the box.

This keyer has a robust set of functions and can be built for less than $40.

The benefit of using an electronic keyer like this is that the keyer’s internal timing circuits determine the duration of the dots and dashes, and the spacing between them.

Be sure to check out Doug’s website and check out his detailed write up on the project.  He also made his code available on GitHub.

 

Fredrik Hübinette has made his own Teensy based lightsaber.

This awesome looking lightsaber features a Graflex 2.0 for the hilt, which is a prop made to look like the original Gaflex flash gun used for Luke’s  lightsaber in the original Star Wars.  WS2811 LEDs are used to light up one of the blades.  He’s also used SK6812 LED strips for another blade.

This video shows the light saber in action, including the different blades made for it.  The sound effects in his lightsaber are most impressive.

Frederick has documented his build on his web site and made his code available as well.  You can read his build log over on the fx-sabers forum.

We previously showed this similar but unrelated light saber project by the Firebrand Forge.